4 comments on You say dominula, I say dominulus

James C. Trager

Yeah, I just learned about this one, too. Indeed, I should have caught it earlier. But let’s not curse the taxonomists, most of whom have a rather poor handle on Latin grammar, and themselves suffer from the interminable linguistic hegemony of the ancient Roman Empire! (Better than phylocode though, eh?)

Most Latin words ending in -ulus, -ulum, -ula are diminutive nouns, maybe even all of them in the classical language. There are a few exceptions though in taxonomic Latin, such as the specific epithet of Paratrechina parvula, a diminutive of a diminutive, if you will. Parvus means small, so parvulus means, roughly, itty-bitty!

you can find, at the start of the discussion of the wasp, the following comment:

74. Polistes dominula (Christ, 1791)
Figs B10.1, 3, 4, 44; C74.1–8.
NOMENCLATURAL NOTE. J.M. Carpenter (pers.
comm.) kindly pointed out to us that the correct
gender ending for this species is dominula.
“Dominula” is the diminutive form of the Latin
noun domina (= mistress) and therefore indeclinable
(the original combination is Vespa dominula
Christ).

The book, put on the internet in February 2008, you can find on the internet as html or as pdf on